Reading the fine print

1 comment February 20th, 2009

Web sites, just like ours, have terms of service.

Let’s just say Facebook changed its “TOS,” setting off a frenzy of people worried that Big Bro declared the right to own their content forevermore. An L.A. Times story puts it this way:

In this case, users weren’t content to hand Facebook the rights to their personal data. They also were unsatisfied by a (CEO Mark) Zuckerberg blog post Monday that many thought amounted to “just trust us.” Users carried out their protests on the website, using the tools Facebook provides for posting blog entries and rallying around causes.

Facebook since has pulled back while it considers what to do next.

I found pretty good points of view from the New York Times.

A pretty good summary of what has happened is here, as well as a lesson. See below.

… why would anybody pay more attention to Facebook’s terms of service than to the other contracts we casually accept? Who reads the roughly 17,500-word “terms and conditions” contract governing Apple’s iTunes Store before buying a song? Who digests Microsoft’s nearly 5,500-word license for Windows Vista before booting up a new PC?

For that matter, how many home buyers read in full the terms of their mortgages before signing stacks of settlement documents?

A company might be understood, if not forgiven, for thinking that people have gotten out of the habit of reading contracts.

Not for the first time, Facebook has learned otherwise. The company, however, can scrape some good out of this debacle by setting a better example.

It’s started things off well by prominently flagging its changed terms of use in a headline atop users’ home pages. The company is also inviting users to contribute to the next set of terms; the group Facebook set up for that purpose drew more than 30,000 users in the first 12 hours.

But their input shouldn’t be limited to providing ideas that Facebook can grind into the usual legalistic sludge. The company should post a draft of its next terms for members to work over.

Wired offers another lesson:

The way through is clear. Craft the legalese to protect the website, but include the comic book version of Moby Dick. Make it very clear what happens when and if someone quits. And regardless, users should know that anything that gets put up on Facebook is likely to survive whatever deletion the site might honestly undertake in hindsight — it’s the nature of the internet to remember the worst.

And perhaps more importantly, sites need make it easy for people to delete everything if they so choose. Few will, but giving the option prevents posts like the Consumerist’s from turning into a tedious three-day media affair.

P.S. Loved this headline: “About-Facebook…”